The Angry Exile: Funniest idea evah!

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday, 9 May 2011

Funniest idea evah!

The person on the left bumping uglies with the person on the right.

Not that I want to be cruel about it, but while I find Clarkson to be quite entertaining sometimes he’s not exactly got the physique that dissolves knicker elastic from across a room, has he? Not so much a sixpack stomach as a firkin, which is probably appropriate for a middle aged man who likes a glass of wine. Speaking as someone who could drop a few kilos himself Clarkson makes me look good, and since he clearly doesn’t give a rip about conforming with the health nazis’ demands for him to be the right shape and size fair play to him. But if he’s charmed his way into Jemima Khan’s pants that’s frankly astonishing and would force me to review nearly everything I’ve ever called bullshit on from wild theories about Bin Liner’s death through every 9/11 conspiracy idea, the Apollo moon landings being filmed anywhere other than the actual moon, 1+n gunmen in the JFK shooting, and every bit of every religious text including all the self contradictory stuff. Khan herself is saying it didn’t happen and there’s no injunction.

Except that I really don’t care much if it did and they have, and if it’s an old fling in the past it’s of even less interest. The use of super injunctions by slebs and pollies to cover up who’s shagging whom is a matter of great indifference to me. I really find myself physically unable to give a shit except for two points. First, since the subjects can’t be named it’s inevitable that there’ll be a lot of speculation naming various people, and equally inevitable much of it will be wrong. Take for example the identity of the mysterious and injunctified ETK, about whom we are told little more than that he’s an entertainer and a married father of two. Some parts of the web have said that ETK is absolutely definitely Clarkson and that there’s absolutely no doubt about it, having clearly missed the fact that Clarkson is actually a married father of three. Is he one of the others? Don’t know and frankly I don’t care – the point is that there are more names being bandied around than there are injunctions and therefore some are being accused of things they haven’t done. Better for there to be no injunctions so those who aren’t involved don’t get dragged into something they have nothing to do with just because gagging orders means that scatter gun speculation on the interwebs is about all that’s left.

Secondly, and rather more seriously than the impact on some sleb’s career/family/lunch or whatever, the existence of super injunctions at all allows the quiet burial of things that are far more important than who may or may not have done the horizontal tango with someone they shouldn’t have. Think back to the first one of these that made big waves, the Trafigura injunction preventing reporting of what was said in Parliament – fucking Parliament. Okay, it still had to be made available in Hansard but people don’t exactly check Hansard every day. We rely on others to report what’s going on there, and even an attempt to prevent that should have rung alarm bells. It was only poetic justice that that injunction eventually bought them a massive case of the Streisand Effect and millions of people who would otherwise have never heard of Trafigura not only became aware of them but also found out that they’d been dumping toxic waste in the sea off Côte d’Ivoire. Now, if some unnamed sleb can get an injunction so powerful that it prevents reporting any details of any kind, all just to keep readers of ‘Ullo! and OhChrist from having a gossip about them, what’s to stop a politician or a corporation with some dirt they don’t want coming out from doing the same thing?

The thought of Jemima Khan going reverse cowgirl on Jeremy Clarkson seems as unlikely as it is unappealing, but at the end of the day if it actually happened then it’s something that really doesn’t affect anyone else beyond their immediate families. But the thought that another Trafigura could use the same legal device to cover its arse is a good enough reason for these super injunctions not to exist at all.